For many years it has been known to utilize power driven devices such as mowers and cultivators, which make it possible for an operator to peform a substantial amount of work in a field, as well as in and around and under trees with a minimum of effort and expense.
In areas where citrus trees and other types of fruit trees are grown commercially, the limbs of the trees in many instances are heavily weighted by fruit, causing them to hang low, and frequently to present a substantial problem to a tractor operator concerned with mowing or cultivating, in that he must be careful to avoid injury to himself, to the trees and to the fruit.
Before the advent of rotary implements that were laterally shiftable, it was not possible to effectively mow the grove or cultivate the soil beneath the low hanging tree branches in order to reduce soil acidity as well as pests, to promote the welfare of the tree, to increase the yield of fruit, and to enchance appearance.
In accordance with our U.S. Pat. No. 2,777,272 entitled "UNDER TREE MOWER AND HARVESTER" which issued Jan. 15, 1957, we taught a mower and harvester which could be projected as well as retracted at the behest of the tractor operator. Normally, such a rotary implement is maintained at an outboard position, but as the tractor neared a tree, it was possible to retract such rotary implement laterally, and thus avoid entirely undesirable contact with the tree trunk.
In the above cited patent, we taught an implement suspension arrangement involving multiple hinge points, thus enabling the implement to have a floating type characteristic such that it easily followed ground contours. Others of our patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 2,882,978 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,976,663 also were concerned with providing significant improvements to undertree mowers.
As a useful adjunct to the laterally shiftable mower having a multipoint suspension, it is known to utilize a so-called swingarm mower on the outboard end of the cultivator housing, with this swingarm mower also being known as a satellite mower. A swingarm or satellite mower on the one hand serves to effectively increase the width of the path being mowed, but on the other hand such mower is designed to retreat or retract at such time as a tree, fencepost or the like is neared, with the swingarm mower continuing to operate, but in an inboard position, until such time as the tree or fence post has been passed. Then, under the influence of a suitable spring bias, the swingarm mower is designed to return to its normal outboard position, in which it can again serve to increase the effective width of the path being mowed.
Unfortunately, swingarm mowers of the past were belt driven, and because of the necessity of keeping the belts properly taut during all swinging movement, the construction of prior art swingarm mowers was necessarily complex and expensive.
Additionally, and quite importantly, since large amounts of power were being transmitted, and considerable belt flexing was occurring, it was quickly found that the lifetime of the driving belts of prior art swingarm mowers was very short, causing considerable downtime and consequently, a significant loss of profit. It was to remedy the problems associated with prior art swingarm mowers that the present invention was evolved.